Life is a series of decisions, a lot of them reactions to conditions and uncertain variables. Being in full control for the entirety of one’s life is impossible, circumstances, to be vague and general, are always there to make life a sprawling clusterfuck that constantly needs to be figured out. Contemporary music legend and fashion visionary Kanye West once famously said: “10% of life is what happens to you, 90% is how you react.”
As much as external conditions tend to dictate options, the power of the human condition is that there’s always decisions to be made, in service of what either drives us or grounds us. Where life is concerned, trials lurk at every corner, and while there’s an excitement in prevailing over them with sheer purpose as a compass, there’s a serially underestimated resilience in using something less glamorous as an anchor through life. It’s not always conscientious, but choosing life at every waking moment of our existence is a constant decision, finding and pulling strength from things, events and people that centre our will to live is a reliable choice when all the chips are down.
The final line from the first verse of IKON’s “Solomon,” the lead single from rapper-producer’s debut Hungry to Live, reads: “I’m thirsty for success but ask me if I’m hungry to live.” Prior to the release of the entire album last November, I’d heard that bar more times than can be counted on both hands and feet together, but the significance of that line carried far more weight sitting dead centre, literally and figuratively, on its housing album.
Released about three years before the arrival of Hungry to Live, “Solomon” is the type of pre-emptive plot give away that stands on its own superbly. Coherent and poignant, IKON crafts a vignette that’s extremely personal and deeply moving on “Solomon,” with his metaphorical transformation from bird to wolf elaborately but succinctly peeled back—it’s a premier example of his supreme world-building ability. While the two comprising verses end with lines featuring the album title verbatim, they appear in different capacities. Where the final bar on the second verse comes off as a statement of fact (“hungry to live and that is the truth”), and rightly so because it closes out the final form, the line from the first verse quoted above listens more like it’s concerned with the process.
In comparison to my appreciation for the second verse closer, I have always been far more transfixed on the final line of the first verse, mainly because the portrayal of a journey often feels more rewarding than the destination itself. In this case, the tension of “ask me if I’m hungry to live” has always felt far more riveting than the decided energy of “I’m hungry to live,” and the few weeks spent with Hungry to Live as an entire volume of context has only served to deepen my connection with the former line.
Giving credit as it is due, Hungry to Live thrives on a brilliantly balanced core, where the equal illumination of preceding situations and resolve is the reason it makes for easy, immersive listening even though the very personal material IKON deals with carries substantial weight. It also helps that the album doesn’t tarry a bit within its half hour playing time, briskly traversing to the final coda of the outro “Lost,” where the guiding force of its motif—the loss of his brother and the torrid path to self-discovery—is eventually laid bare.
If “Lost” is the soul of Hungry to Live, “Solomon” is undoubtedly its heart, in that it’s the crescendo point where trial is converted to triumph, and uncertainty becomes assertion. Sitting at the centre of the tracklist, “Solomon” is where the themes that make the album compelling, transformation and resilience on the way to a better self, coalesce powerfully. Since the lifeblood of the entire album flows in and out of this song, “Solomon” carries more gravitas and echoes even louder than it did in the years since its arrival.
In its potent brevity, there’s an urgency to Hungry to Live, and inherently “Solomon,” that makes it emotionally resonant. Sure, there’s an attached charm to knowing the narrator is in a better mental space, but it’s the whirlwind of a journey that is most attractive since albums like these don’t just express, they also willingly give, and the best way to receive is to relate with the pain. Mind you, this doesn’t equate to simply reducing the artist to the turbulence he’s faced or turning him into an avatar, it just means relating with his struggles.
Not much will change much in my initial technical assessment of Hungry to Live, it’s still a wistfully crafted, sometimes uneven, in terms of sheer musical grip, body of work. On a personal level, though, it’s a different story altogether.
I always looked on those who committed suicide or even harboured suicidal thoughts with chagrin. When you’re from a religious background where you’re taught life is a gift from God and all that accompanying jazz, seeing any tangible reason(s) why anyone would consider and choose to end their own life was impossible. I believed you simply go through stuff and try to come out a better, stronger person. My perception had thawed in recent years, but it became very real in the midpoint of last year when I had to start fighting my own suicidal thoughts.
In what I’ll just sum up as an unfortunate turn of events that include two close brushes with death on the road, and the wearying feeling of discontent at life, everything turned beige and it was a miracle to go through a day without multiple thoughts of everything going pitch black, possibly self-caused. Not even that I’d read The Noonday Demon months prior prepared me for this stark level of blank but raging desolation. Over the years I’d gone through periods where I’d be inexplicably downcast, for weeks at a time, but this time around, I was seemingly at the bottom of the barrel and I wasn’t even trying to escape the muck. During that period, I did things because I was obligated to do them, writing became an actual task and I’d drop my pen for a while, a big deal because I get boundless joy from weathering through a pitch or a random piece, regardless of whether I submitted it for publishing or not. As the cherry on top of my misery sundae, my physical health floundered, hard.
By the time Hungry to Live was released in November of last year, I was in a better space. Although I appreciated IKON’s candidness paired with the message of resilience at once, I staved off getting too close to the album. Considering that similarly, deeply personal albums like Paybac’s The Biggest Tree and M.I Abaga’s
Truth is: from its specific cover art and
Central to Hungry to Live, the ordinary but pertinent POV that getting through each day is a decision each person has to constantly make struck me a little differently on returning to the album on New Year’s Eve and making it my companion for that day (alongside American rapper Earl Sweatshirt’s Some Rap Songs). Like clockwork, “I’m thirsty for success but ask me if I’m hungry to live” continued to standout, except it didn’t just encapsulate the tension of persistence, tucked in between the robust insight of “Solidify” and the warm amity of “Ships,” “Solomon” and that line in particular began to feel like a positive nudge.
“Count your blessings” is a saying that finds a way to annoy me. I mean, it’s not that I’m not grateful for the little things, but there’s a sense of dissatisfaction that’s been lodged in my mind for a few months now. Anyone that knows me knows I’ve been looking to make the full-time switch into writing for a minute. My frustration at not being able to do what I really want at an ideal capacity often tugs at my psyche, parlaying its way into grey days where I just coast through my activities without an iota of purpose or any sense of belonging. On such days, it takes extra strength to keep trudging on.
By contrast, the mundaneness of “ask me if I’m hungry to live” contrasts the lofty desire of “I’m thirsty for success,” but considering the idea of a big picture has the propensity to drive a lot of us, IKON’s call-back to the importance of simplicity and self-care on a micro scale is apt. Everyone has their own image of success, and how they want to achieve it, but life, being a pot of burnt beans, more often than not happens, throwing a wrench into initial plans. In the lowest, most trying of moments, holding on to something more grounding than ambition is a quality option in bleak periods—the deeper the roots…
I have come to the melodramatic conclusion that I’m a grumpy old man and a sulking young person rolled into one, so I don’t know if I will better handle desolate days going forward, but I know I will be asking myself if “I’m hungry to live.” In practice over the opening weeks of this New Year, this measure of self-inquisition helps in putting things into perspective, creating a subtle but bracing effect where everything I am and have comes into focus over what I don’t have but want. It doesn’t mean I plan on scaling down my ambitions, I’m still thirsty for my own version of success, or that disappointments won’t sting, it’s that copping resurgence and valuing reassurances from the right places is now of the highest significance to me.
IKON’s transformation to wolf is earmarked by the sturdy bonds formed with those closest to him, testament to the importance of a nexus of friends while moving through life. I’m a notoriously terrible friend, keeping long term bonds is a struggle I’ve been working and failing woefully at, so I want to thank my friends who are yet to give up on me—for those that have, I promise to try harder.
Consistently writing for FilterFree in the last year and some change has given me the honour of colliding with some of the most intelligent and remarkable people I’ve met, turning us from acquaintances to acquaintances who share inside jokes, and possibly good friends, bonds I’m eternally grateful for. (The day Honour and Mifa talk to me like they’re not my brothers, I’m fighting them.) Special thanks to Oga at the Top, the Chiaman, for the golden platform, the books, steadily and sometimes quietly pushing me to become a better writer, and a lot of great advice. To everyone who’s read, shared, critiqued and commented on my writing, I’m especially grateful to.
Here’s to better decisions, achieving our aims, and finding ways to remain hungry to live for the remainder of 2019.